William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan (19 March 1860-26 July 1925) was Secretary of State of the United States from 5 March 1913 to 9 June 1915, succeeding Philander C. Knox and preceding Robert Lansing. Bryan was a member of the US House of Representatives from Nebraska for the US Democratic Party from 1891 to 1895, and he was well known for his support of introducing silver as another currency option ("bimetallism" with gold), his strong belief in populism, his transition of the Democratic Party into a liberal party, and his support of Prohibition.

Biography
William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois on 19 March 1860, the son of state senator Silas Bryan and Mariah Elizabeth Jennings. From 1883 to 1887, Bryan practiced law after graduating from the Northwestern University School of Law, and he moved to Lincoln, Nebraska as the city rapidly expanded during the late 1880s.

In 1890, he was elected to the US House of Representatives to represent Nebraska's 1st congressional district as a member of the US Democratic Party. In 1896, the great orator Bryan ran as a "dark horse" candidate during the Democratic presidential primaries, and his "cross of gold" speech attacking the gold standard made him a hero for the Democrats; he was carried on the shoulders of delegates to the convention after his amazing speech. Seen as the perfect candidate to lead change in America, Bryan was chosen as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1896, but he was defeated by US Republican Party nominee William McKinley, who won 23 states to Bryan's 22 (Bryan won 46.70% of the popular vote). Bryan was opposed to militarism, but he supported President McKinley's leadership during the Spanish-American War, as Spain's oppression of the peoples of Cuba and the Philippines went against his liberal beliefs. However, he opposed the annexation of the Philippines and American imperialism, and he ran in the 1900 election. He was defeated by McKinley again, and he was defeated by Republican presidential nominee William Howard Taft in 1908.

Bryan would be elevated to a position of considerable power when President Woodrow Wilson nominated him as Secretary of State in 1913, and he supported American military intervention in the Mexican Revolution in 1914. In 1915, he resigned from this post in protest about the hypocrisy of Wilson after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, as he was shocked that Wilson would care about the drowning of a few American citizens without caring about starving an entire country, Germany. Afterwards, Bryan would support Prohibition and moralism, and he supported the anti-evolution Scopes Trial of 1925. He died just five days after the trial was concluded.